The New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership will be helping to support at least 1,000 businesses, and create 200 business start-ups and 200 new jobs, after securing £3.9 million of Regional Growth Funding as part of the Ipswich and Norwich City Deals. The deal will also lever in at least a further £8 million of public and private sector funding.

Funding will be used to create a Growth Hub for Greater Ipswich and Greater Norwich, which will provide Norfolk and Suffolk businesses with a ‘no wrong door’ route for accessing business support.

Through the Growth Hubs, businesses will have greater and simpler access to national and local business support, as well as access to several new business support programmes, including: -

Early Stage Grant Scheme - Providing grants between £5k-£50k for businesses in first year of trading, to help them grow and employ people.

Innovation Readiness Programme - Two dedicated coordinators to help businesses apply to innovation programmes and draw down higher levels of funding to support their growth.

Innovation Vouchers - Allowing companies to purchase expertise at reduced cost from regional universities to access specialist facilities, mentoring, internships and consultancy or a combination of the above

Business Start-up Programme – Expanding support for business start-up through dedicated support, to increase the number of new businesses.

Growth Hub coordinators will be able to provide a first point of contact for any business, providing a diagnostic service and accurate, up-to-date information on support schemes to unlock both local and national support and funding.

Suffolk Chamber of Commerce will be responsible for the management of the Growth Hub, with other elements provided by enterprise agencies NWES, MENTA, Finance East, University of East Anglia, University Campus Suffolk and Norwich University for the Arts.

Allocation of The Regional Growth Funding will be through Lancaster University. As well as helping to decide which cities’ proposals received funding, Lancaster University academics will also be providing on-going support and evaluation of the cities.

Lancaster, which was named as a top-ten university for SME engagement by the recent review by Sir Andrew Witty, was brought in because of its experience and expertise in working with business, local authorities, as well as Local Enterprise Partnerships and growth hubs.

Lancaster has worked with more than 5,000 SMEs since 1999. It has also helped the creation of more than 250 new business and more than 4,000 new jobs.

Following today’s announcement (Friday) the LEP will work with partners to finalise contract terms with the Government, with the Growth Hubs expected to begin operating in the spring of 2014.

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Natalie Chaplin